'The lab-leak conspiracists were certain that the report would validate their contentions, for which there has never been any valid scientific evidence. Instead it did just the opposite.' Column by hiltzikm:
Column: Contrary to latest claims, there’s still not a speck of evidence that COVID escaped from a Chinese lab
The “zoonosis” hypothesis accepted by most virologists and epidemiologists is that the virus reached humans via wildlife, almost certainly through a wildlife market in the huge metropolis of Wuhan, where animals likely to be intermediate carriers of the Sars2 virus were on sale. Scientists have found molecular and epidemiological evidence linking the outbreakThe second hypothesis is that the outbreak can be traced to the Wuhan Institute.
The report specifically addresses two supposedly key pieces of evidence promoted by the lab-leak camp. One is that several WIV researchers fell ill in fall 2019 with COVID — in other words, that the virus was rampant in the lab well before it reached the outside community. Column: ProPublica and Vanity Fair are pushing the COVID lab-leak theory, but their exposé is a train wreck
Then there’s the claim that WIV experienced a biosafety incident in late 2019 that prompted a crisis response. The conspiracists say this must have been a lab leak. The intelligence report says: not so. WIV hosted a biosafety training course for virus staff in November 2019, but the training “appears routine, rather than a response to a specific incident.”
The organization that deserves to feel most embarrassed by the intelligence report is ProPublica. Its article largely relied on Toy Reid, a former U.S. government China analyst who claimed to be more fluent in Chinese government argot than native Mandarin-speakers, a claim that should have raised eyebrows at ProPublica and its partner Vanity Fair sky-high.
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